Developing an Intervention to Enhance Parental Monitoring in Family Foster Care

Abstract

Purpose: To fulfill their supervision and counseling responsibilities to foster parents, social workers need an effective way to indirectly monitor foster children's mental health and learning ability within a model of tripartite parenthood. This article describes how we are developing an intervention aimed at enhancing parental monitoring as a protective factor in family foster care. Methods: Focusing on the initial parts of Fraser et al.'s stepwise model for intervention development and drawing on ongoing research, we describe the main challenges faced in developing a program theory of parental monitoring. Results: The product is a manual that can transform the agenda of counseling meetings based on the following pre-requisites: appropriate standardized instruments, a common digital platform, training social workers, and being responsive to municipal differences. Conclusion: Our experience thus far allows us to be cautiously optimistic about strengthening parental monitoring in family foster care.